After a failed attempt to donate her children’s used Lego toys Hawthorne set out to make something even better, recyclable and totally eco friendly. Hawthorne, who is also a design professor at Stanford University, spent the last couple of years designing the perfect paper building block and has just unveiled the first three kits. Each kit comes in a reusable envelope and contains the flat-packed paper blocks, an instruction poster, decorative stickers and glue tabs.

The blocks are die cut into the paper and are easy to remove before folding and bending in the tabs to form a sturdy and colorful building block. All of the blocks are basic geometric shapes, like cubes, rectangles, pyramids and more, each brightly colored with playful pattern. Right now, Paper Punk has three different kits designed with all the parts to make a puppy, a race car and a robot, but because the blocks are totally interchangeable, the limit is your imagination. Another great part is that at the end of the life of the toy, or if a corner happens to rip, it can be recycled along with your junk mail and paper.